Thursday, May 6, 2010

Frugal Time

I have been taking a break from the frugal blogging world as I try to prepare myself for an upcoming year of working from home, at least part time.

It's gotten me thinking about how frugality must be something applied to not just money, but also to time (and everyone said "time is money!"). I must be careful about how I allot and spend my time so that, at the end of the day, I have enough left to get/finish everything I need.

Compared to time frugality, money frugality is a piece of cake.

Just like with money, being frugal with your time comes down to priorities and wants/nice to haves/needs. There are things that I WANT to spend my time doing -- watching endless episodes of Friends and drinking lattes, for example. There are things that are NICE to spend my time on and if I tried really hard I could say "well that's a NEED!" -- like training for my triathlon and staying up with the bargain blogs so I can get the most out of my grocery trips. And there are things that are definite NEEDS, like spending time with God, Luke and David (in that order) and working.

But for some reason managing my time is so much more difficult than managing my money. How I use both reflects what I value most - my personal idols, you might say. I was reading I Kings this morning and came across this verse:

"No one else so completely sold himself to what was evil in the Lord's sight as Ahab did under the influence of his wife Jezebel. His worst outrage was worshiping idols just as the Amorites had done -- the people whom the Lord had driven out from the land ahead of the Israelites." (I Kings 21:25-26).

Ahab was one bad dude (I was going to say "bada$$ but that didn't seem appropriate, haha). He killed people. He stole stuff. He oppressed the poor. All sorts of things I would say were way, way, WAY worse than ignoring God. .. I mean killing people is bad!

But God considered the idol worship to be THE WORST THING EVER. ... and if I am spending my assets (time and money) to do things that do not put God first I am doing the Exact Same Thing.

Uncool, Amy. Very, very uncool.

And so I have to stop and ask myself, first and foremost, as I organize my life and budget my time -- is God the thing that gets top billing? Is He -- and is His will -- my top priority? Do I consider Him before making major decisions?

My little junket (OK, major junket) back into journalism is going to cost me a major time commitment and is causing me to make some major priority decisions. I have to decide how to care for Dave during this and what (if any) childcare to use. These are hard, hard decisions.